THE DAILY WIRE · NORTH CAROLINA · 2026-10-17
A Dog's Nose, a Worm's Stripes, and the Coming Apocalypse of Winter
A pit bull's refusal to stop sniffing a patch of ground has, once again, done the job the National Weather Service apparently cannot: forecast winter using a caterpillar.
According to the report, a woman investigated what her dog wouldn't leave alone and found a woolly worm — the banded caterpillar long consulted by rural folklore for its supposed ability to predict the severity of the coming cold season based on the width of its reddish-brown stripe. The wider the stripe, tradition holds, the milder the winter; narrow stripe, bundle up. This particular worm, per the account, is bad news for anyone who likes their toes warm.
This reporter has covered blizzards, droughts, and one extremely ill-advised squirrel-based almanac, and can say with confidence that woolly worm forecasting has a worse track record than most meteorologists and a far better public approval rating. People trust a bug they can hold. Nobody has ever hugged a Doppler radar.
For an eyewitness account, this reporter located Gentry, a wild turkey working the same patch of Appalachian scrubland where the worm was discovered, who claims decades of unofficial forecasting experience of his own.
Their account of events differs from the official record.
The dog, for its part, could not be reached for comment, having already moved on to investigating a rock. Spun and done.
“That worm's been running the long-range forecast up here since before the Weather Channel existed, and frankly his stripe-to-snowfall ratio holds up better than most apps. My cousin got frostbite the one year everybody ignored him.” — Gentry, Blue Ridge turkey
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